


Beauty Garlanded in Hell

by Sara Generis (kanadka)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate History, M/M, Trench Warfare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-15 17:30:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1313317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanadka/pseuds/Sara%20Generis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In times of war, the General is his ally, and so Ivan waits... but the fuel of hope is innocence, and irony its attendant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beauty Garlanded in Hell

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt 'cuddling', and because I can't write fluff, has less cuddling and more trench warfare. (Oh they'll cuddle alright. They'll cuddle like their lives depend on it.) Alternate History WWI in which there's at least one moment where the allies fight on the same geographical front.

On the seventh straight day of rain, Ivan began to think that perhaps his luck had finally run out.

They had been bunkering down in the muddy trench for three weeks now with little hot sustenance besides oatmeal and tea, and Ivan had become very sick of both. But there had been no cease-fires called, not even to gather the dead, (and covertly obtain better supplies) and so on they fought.

"The enemy only seems relentless," Matthew kept saying, his voice overfull of conviction and strength, betraying his true anxieties. "They’re just as tired as we are," he insisted, before he intermittently popped up his head like a groundhog to fling grenades or aim his rifle.

If anyone seemed relentless or tireless, it was Matthew. Not for the first time, Ivan was thrilled to have him fighting alongside.

But the last of the landmines scattered amidst the no man’s land had sounded yesterday and the enemy pressed onward without retreat. Ivan had not counted them but there had been so many recently that he felt they must have exhausted their supply.

Any moment now, reinforcements would appear. They always had, in the nick of time. That was Ivan’s specialty. That was one of the reasons Matthew even bothered fighting with him.

It was difficult to take heart in his own hopes and his past luck when he felt certain it could slip out from underneath him more easily than his feet on the mud. Similarly, Matthew’s courage and confidence only held him aloft so high. Ivan felt ready for failure. He felt ready for  _sleep_. The romanticism of war - could there have been said to have been one in the first place - had long since worn off. 

He suspected the same was happening to Matthew, although his comrade in arms - his ally - had yet to utter a single word of jaded protest. How much of that Ivan admired, he did not know. Rather than own up to his feelings, he preferred to pin it down to the youth and naivete of Canada, silly young Canada, who (so Ivan felt) hadn’t seen much in the way of real strife.

… Then again, Russia was not used to wars of this magnitude. Large wars, yes. But not so large as this.

—

On the fourteenth straight day of rain, Matthew spotted the messenger crossing the no man’s land on foot. Ivan watched through the scope as he took cautious wary steps, but he didn’t blow himself up. How very  _lucky_ , Ivan thought bitterly, and wanted to pull the trigger and shoot him out of sheer spite.

But Alfred ordered his gun down, which made Ivan pout and Matthew frown. Matthew was wary of the stranger from the second he saw him and the message he bore - coded, of course, though Arthur’s cryptographers are on it - didn’t strike him as something relevant. “Here,” Matthew told him, “I got Arthur to send us patrolling the quiet sector. Just long enough until he leaves or they decide to kill him.”

In the end, they killed him when they found out he was a spy, but the damage was already done. Matthew and Ivan, out in the quiet sector, found out about it through telegraph: influenza. A new kind of weapon that literally walked into their camp. Trench conditions didn’t make it easy to survive in the fullest of health, but with the British and American troops sick, it became difficult to keep up appearances. Ivan predicted the enemy might take the front line within days.

And of course, influenza being airborne had rekindled his old paranoia, practically a weapon itself. Every cough he uttered made him think twice; every headache Matthew complained of made him want to desert his ally for fear of catching ill.

The General was still nowhere near in sight.

—

On the twenty-first straight day of rain, the temperature had finally dropped, but not so much that it meant anything. And worse still, at long last, even Matthew began to grow long-faced at the prospect of the shift. Ivan felt that if Matthew - ever the optimist - were to lose heart, there would really be nothing left for it but to give up and give in.

However, the tiny dip in the mercury made Matthew ask anyway, “Do you think it’s a sign?”

Ivan reflected a minute before he answered. If it were reinforcements … but there wasn’t anything to go on except the slight cold, and that, the enemy could easily withstand. More easily could they survive if the temperature dropped slowly, day by day and bit by bit. Then, they’d acclimatise and there would be no advantage gained.

If this was the General’s handiwork, it didn’t look like it. Ivan therefore deduced that it was nothing more than bad weather. Combined with the awful timing of the flu, it did not make him any more hopeful.

But Matthew’s voice, his tremulous, hopeful quaver of a voice … he couldn’t make himself tell Matthew the truth.

"I think it might be," Ivan told him, and then before he could stop himself, continued: "We should bunker down together tonight to conserve heat. The General is not easy to live with whether you are his ally or his enemy." This was not entirely true. The trenches were not easy sleeping anywhere, and the temperatures could fall below freezing quite easily with the General’s help.

But the General was not coming for him this time, and greedy Ivan wanted to take what comfort he could. And that had nothing to do with protection from the elements.

That night, as Matthew fell asleep in his arms, he tried not to feel guilty and utterly failed. He was not much of a religious man anymore but prayed anyway. He prayed to the orthodox god, a few saints, Christ, and then for good measure Perun and Svarog. At least they would not be quite so upset with him falling asleep with a man nestled against him, his face pressed into Ivan’s neck and tucked under his chin. And maybe they might grant his desperate wish that his ancient ally would show up already.

As he drifted uneasily towards sleep, he wondered how many more nights he could get away with this.

—

Ivan woke at three am - for it must have been three am, the moon being where it was and at such a phase - to chattering teeth, a persistent, all-over body ache, and a thick, bright pain in the front of his head. All of this, he mistook initially as sickness. Immediately, but with great regret, he distanced himself from his ally and moved himself away as a precautionary separation. Even if he had lied to him, the least he could do would be to spare Matthew.

He did this so quickly that he was around the corner in the trenches before he realised two things at once.

One, the landscape had changed drastically from dull brown and grey to brilliant bright white.

And two, he could not for the sake of the blowing snow make out a single tree on the horizon.

Ivan smiled and let the cold air hit him in the face, less like the gentle caress of a parent and more like the sting of reprimand (if he closed his eyes and listened carefully, he swore he could hear among the howls of wind, the words, ‘you stupid boy, of course I came’) for precisely two minutes before even he gave up and returned to Matthew.

Once there, he tucked himself against Matthew’s huddled body, balled up in effort to conserve heat. He pulled a thick felted wool blanket around the both of them, and fell back asleep.


End file.
